Seeing the Light

Save your vision. Go outside.

Photo by Ion Fet on Unsplash

Hello friends,

The dark lengthens. Shadows grow taller, spreading the darkness like an invasive weed. Fears reach out with their spindly fingers. They use the lack of light to convince us of things that are clearly untrue during the day. But the dark is not only psychological. Spend too much time there, and skin grows pallid. Energy drains from the body. Eyeballs stretch.

I recently learned that the world is going blind. The prevalence of myopia, or nearsightedness, is growing at an unprecedented rate. Myopia occurs when the eyeball gets too long. The more it elongates, the worse vision gets. When I was younger, I was told that reading too much (or doing too much of anything too close to my face) would make my eyes worse. To my mind, this was a reasonable trade-off. Reading expanded my universe. It taught me new words and ideas and showed me that my mind could create entire worlds from nothing. What’s a pair of glasses in the face of limitless creation?

I got my first pair of glasses when I was around twelve years old. When I put them on, I had the universal experience of seeing individual leaves for the first time in forever. When I left the ophthalmologist’s office, I was in awe of the southern live oaks outside. Their leaves were oblong, much like my deformed eyeballs. But they were smooth and gathered together in bunches. The great trees’ bark was rough and cracked like an elephant’s skin. I stood there, gazing upward, wondering how I’d gone so long without seeing. On the ride home, I couldn’t tear my eyes away from all the leaves. Nature was magnificent.

Until last week, when I read the article linked above, I believed the theory that excessive reading and poor genetics were the cause of my vision woes. But while those things play a role, scientists have learned that lack of sunlight may be the most significant contributor to myopia. Studies have shown that children who spend two hours outdoors every day have much smaller incidences of myopia than their counterparts who spend all day indoors. My parents’ insistence that I play outside more often carried more wisdom than any of us realized. But I didn’t appreciate the leaves until I could no longer see them.

Eyes up close are like cross sections of trees with decades of stories written in the rings. Droughts leave their mark, but so do times of plenty. If you look deeply enough, you can see whole worlds open up like pages in a book. When was the last time you looked into the eyes of someone you love? Could you see the darkness there? Could you see the light?

Yesterday, I took a walk around my neighborhood. I enjoy the ritual of taking the same path every day and seeing the subtle changes of the year. I don’t walk as much in the summer, though. It’s too hot. But ironically, autumn’s decrease in sunlight makes it easier to get outside. The heat retreats, and I accept its surrender. As I ambled along the familiar route, I could almost feel my eyeballs sighing with relief. They relaxed into the calm of twilight, and they lingered on the leaves.

Until next time,
Yardena

WEEKEND POTPOURRI:

• Currently on repeat

• This is what depression feels like.

• Need to build some resilience? Channel this asteroid.

• I can’t explain how much I love this chaotic poem about Pluto. Please read it.

• If you want to zone out for a couple of minutes, check out this video of paint, soap, and water moving abstractly to the soothing sounds of Brian Eno.

• REPLENISH

• Plastic isn’t going away, but we might be able to recycle it more efficiently with the help of enzymes found in nature. Alternatively, we could make more art.

• Modern medicine has extended the human lifespan, but it hasn’t focused on what it actually feels like to grow old.

Thanks for reading. This edition of Letters on Being is free, but if you enjoyed it, please consider sharing it with a friend or upgrading to a paid subscription. Also, are you nearsighted? Do you remember seeing leaves for the first time? What role does sunlight play in your life?